This invention relates to a railway car. It relates particularly to a skeleton railway car used as an idler car to be positioned as a spacer car between conventional railway cars loaded with very long objects.
When long objects such as plates, girders, structural steel, pipe, poles, timbers and the like are shipped by rail and are longer than the length of the car, American Association of Railroads (A.A.R.) rules require a flat car be connected to the loaded car so that the flat car is spaced under, but not usually supporting, the projecting ends of the long objects.
Railway flat cars are built without sides or ends but have a very strong flat structural floor to permit the flat car to carry large, heavy or bulky objects, such as machinery, that cannot otherwise fit in a gondola or freight car. The use of a conventional flat car as an idler car or spacer between cars carrying very long objects is wasteful and expensive since it prevents the railroad from using the car for which it was designed, i.e. carrying large, heavy, bulky freight, and requires the shipper to pay high rates to use the flat car as a spacer car.
Skeleton cars, such as described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,577,933 to Ferris, have been designed in the past to carry special loads such as ocean freight containers in "land bridge" operations. However, such prior skeleton cars have required a complex, strong structural truss design in order to carry the vertical loads of the shipping containers placed on the cars.